THE TRUMP EFFECT: ESCALATION IN THE ISRAELI DISCOURSE ON A PREVENTIVE WAR AGAINST IRAN
In my previous article Netanyahu is Pushing for a Preventive War I analysed a strategic phenomenon unprecedented in its scope and intensity in the Israeli politico-military discourse. Leading headlines in the media declared that “the next mission is Iran’s nuclear sites”. Senior politicians and commentators spoke with urgency, using identical language, of the “one time opportunity” to attack the Iranian nuclear project. Military correspondents leaked that the Air Force was speeding up its preparations for a preventive attack on the nuclear facilities following the fall of the Assad regime, the destruction of most of the Syrian army, and the unrestricted corridor that had been opened up to Israel on the way to Iran. Netanyahu repeatedly emphasized the weakness of Iran following the October 2024 Israeli attack, and the freedom of action to attack anywhere in Iran. The calls for a preventive war against the Iranian nuclear sites in the near future was perceived in Israel as a necessary and obvious step.
Furthermore: no reservations about the action were voiced in the Israeli discourse even though this involved initiating a war with the risk of quickly descending into a broad one. As the time for the entry of President elect Trump drew closer, the intensity of the combative narrative for a preventive war against Iran increased. At the core of his recent article on the nuclear issue, commentator Barak Ravid emphasized that Netanyahu’s personal emissary Ron Dermer came out of a meeting with Trump with the feeling that there was a high likelihood that the President would support an Israeli or American attack on Iranian nuclear sites. The war narrative led to a report on the front page of Yediot Aharonot (27 December 2024), by the political commentator and Netanyahu confidant Amit Segal, that Trump was ready for an attack on Iran and “would be happy to supply Israel with the means necessary to do the work for him”.
Nadav Eyal dramatically summed this up in his 10 January 2025 Yediot Aharonot article: for the first time Israel believes that it can independently carry out an effective and powerful attack on the Iranian nuclear project and destroy most of it in “quick and powerful actions”. Nadav Eyal did note that this would be dependent on the US supplying Israel with the “equipment and means that it had so far refrained for supplying” (especially huge bunker penetrating bombs for the attack on the Fordow facility for enriching 60% uranium tens of meters underground). But at the same time, he consoled his readers by saying that there was not doubt that Trump would approve the weapons necessary for the attack. The above provide a representative sample of the conformist frame of mind in Israel regarding the Iranian nuclear issue.
There was a common element to the reports, declarations and commentaries that spoke in one voice of an imminent preventive war. There was a sense of relief at the end of the Biden administration which had put the brakes on Israeli plans to attack Iran. A substantial conceptual change is in the offing. For the first time, with the election of President Trump the obstacles had been removed, and Israel would receive the green light for preventive action against the Iranian nuclear project. Is this a correct assessment of the situation? Does it give the complete picture? Has the Israeli public been presented with all the facts or have some of them been ignored?
The missing link in the mounting calls for a preventive war is that we do not know on which intelligence basis the correspondents and commentators relied. In Israel, unlike in the US, it is not the custom to publish unclassified versions of intelligence assessments by the Military Intelligence Branch (responsible for the National Assessment) or by the Mossad. This makes it difficult to provide answers to the questions I have raised. I will therefore try to present a different, more complex analytical picture. To point out significant factual elements that were ignored or downplayed. This will be in great part an analysis of the road not taken.
Analysist and specialists in Europe and the US will be surprised to learn that research institutes, experts on Iran and senior commentators in Israel had ignored the US National Intelligence Assessments. Israel did not refer at all to the reports of the National Intelligence reports (neither from today or from the past) which, by Congressional law, bind the President. The latest DNI report on the Iranian nuclear issue, (the unclassified version published in December 2024) includes in its opening lines the clear statement that “the Intelligence Community continues to assess that as of 26 September 2024, Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” . The report relates to the acceleration of the uranium enrichment to 60% and notes that Iran “has, however, undertaken activities that better position it to produce one”. On this point, CIA Director Bill Burns in a 10 January 2025 NPR radio interview said that the US does not have evidence that Iran has decided to build nuclear weapons. He does not see today any sign that Iran has reached a decision to reverse the Supreme Leader’s 2003 decision to suspend the nuclear weaponization program. Burns gives us to understand that watching the nuclear weaponization issue lies at the core of the work of US intelligence. In an earlier interview in October 2024, Burns emphasized that the Agency would be able to see relatively early on a reversal of the Iranian decision and renewal of the weaponization program. The possibility of the existence of a concrete weaponization program in Iran (more than calculations of the “break out time” to enriching and stockpiling high grade uranium that also present a threat) is the analytical intelligence benchmark that would oblige the US President to take military action to neutralize the Iranian nuclear weapons threat.
This will likely be the latest DNI report on the Iranian nuclear issue that will be placed on President Trump’s desk when he enters the White House on 20 January 2025. As we have seen, the National Intelligence Assessment that Iran is not building nuclear weapons and does not have a nuclear weaponization program binds the US President and would not allow him to initiate a war against Iranian nuclear facilities or to authorize Israel to do this for him. The US National Intelligence Assessment that Iran is not building nuclear weapons has been, in my view, the main barrier preventing US Presidents in recent decades from granting Netanyahu permission to attack the nuclear sites.
We do not yet know how the US intelligence system will take shape under Trump. We are facing an unpredictable President. It is possible that Netanyahu is counting on the US President this time ignoring the National Intelligence Assessment reports that block moves for a preventive war against Iran. But Trump will also have to take into account, in addition to his unwillingness to get entangled in additional wars in the Middle East, the warning of US intelligence that an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will lead to a counter reaction in the form of uranium enrichment to the 90% level of nuclear weapons, to Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT, and the renewal of its weaponization program. We are facing a new regional and global reality, full of dangers.
Shemuel Meir is an independent Israeli strategic analyst. Graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a former IDF and Tel Aviv University researcher.